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Show . j his slanderous article on the greatest mining camp on earth? No, he seemed to get rattled; he displayed none of that brilliancy of i mind which gained him fame as a writer. Like a silly schoolboy ( he said he was only "joking." lie did not mean what he said ' about Butte, it was just a "josh." A person must have a blunted j sense, of humor who could not see the humor in the thing. But Butte failed to see the joke, and when Fra Elbertus lectured that : night, he spoke to empty seats. Evidently Mr. nubbard profited by the Butte experience. He went to Spokane from Butte, and the first thing he did was to call up the reporters and tell them that he thought Spokane the most divinely beautiful city on this terres- 1 trial sphere. , IS BUTTE THE UGLIEST CITY ON EARTH? Elbert Hubbard, or Fra Elbertus, is not popular in Butte. The I editor of the Philistine, according to the residents of the Smoky ' city, occupies in the lecture field the relative position that the yel- ' low newspaper does in journalism. Butte has been "sore" at Fra Elbertus for nearly two years. Fra. Elbertus evidently thought ' that the population of the big camp had entirely changed since his first-visit, for he came back a second time, about a week ago, and he was properly flayed by the newspapers of the Copper City. " It seems that Hubbard on his lecturing tour of two years ago spent a night and a day in Butte. He delivered a lecture under the auspices of the woman's club, was treated hospitably, as all visitors to the West are, and went away considerably wealthier than he was when he arrived. But Elbert Hubbard keeps a close touch on the public pulse. He also has a gift as a descriptive writer. The result was that when he returned to his Eastern home he wrote up Butte as Easterners imagine it, and did a fine piece of descriptive descrip-tive work. The only trouble with Fra Elbertus' story of the big camp waa that it was not true. He pictured the imaginary Western mining camp, haggard men urged on with whiskey at 25 cents a drink, gambling wide open, Vice flagrant, every man ready with suit case. ' packed to leave at the earliest moment. And then he said Butte was the ugliest city on earth. That made the Butteites good and mad. How could those magnificent mountains, yielding millions Of dollars worth of precious metals and giving employment to thon-I thon-I ' sands be ugly? And the idea of Butte having no grass, there are I . at least two yards in town that boast lawps, and Columbia Gardens , is really a beauty spot. But then,' beauty is a comparative thing, a matter largely of nnlnion Butts might be beautiful to its citizens and ugly to Hub-T Hub-T bard. Bot df ! Elbertus take this stand when reproached for 1 |